The Worst President for the Black Community Since Reconstruction

During MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show on Sunday, Republican strategist Ron Christie erupted at a fellow panelist when the issue of race surfaced.

The discussion (originally on the power and influence of the tea party) quickly became heated as the African-American Republican strongly objected to the notion that racism has been an “influencing factor” in the conservative movement.

Proving that the Liberal charge of “racism” is generally an ideological-crutch to facilitate a speedy end to debate, the point was made on the racially-obsessed MSNBC show that racism has been an influencing factor in the tea-party’s opposition to President Barack Obama. The video, if you can watch it without breaking your computer screen, is worth the few minutes you can bear.

It is hard to decide what is more difficult to comprehend: The panelist’s apostolic faith that the Conservative movement is full of racism, or Harris Perry’s insistence that only liberalism can acquiesce the inequalities between races in America. Even when Ron Christie presented an eye-witness account that debunked a “racist” anecdote, the panel dismissed his testimony as misinformed and inaccurate.

But the most audacious moment of liberal race-baiting came near the end of the segment, when Melissa Harris-Perry began to wax poetic about “disparate impact.” The concept of disparate impact epitomizes the Left’s desire to illustrate racist policies where there are none, and paint colorblind policies as promulgating tools of racist intentions.

According to the business dictionary (yeah… I have one of those) disparate impact is the adverse effect of a practice or standard that is neutral and non-discriminatory in its intention but, nonetheless, disproportionately affects individuals having a disability or belonging to a particular group based on their age, ethnicity, race, or sex.

The concept behind disparate impact is what lead to Liberals pursuing government regulations that encouraged sub-prime mortgages, predatory lending, and crippling banking standards. It is a concept that defines any intentional effort to discard racial consequence, as racist in nature. It is the bane of business, banking and Conservatives everywhere; because (apparently) only Liberals are immune from the “disparate impact” of their actions.

For example: The Bush tax rates disproportionately impacted minorities, if only because they are disproportionately represented in the lower classes. The Bush tax rate cuts, much to the dismay of libertarians and conservatives, actually made the tax code more “progressive.” Lower incomes were, therefore, granted a larger break, and benefited from the rate cuts’ enactment more than the upper classes.

But this is nothing new. Lower income earners always benefit more from across-the-board tax rate cuts, as their level of disposable income is generally benefited by a greater percentage when they are allowed to keep more of their money. In fact, it was this individualistic notion (or as Kennedy referred to it: civilian economics) that caused many minorities, black leaders, and suffrage movement members to support the Republican Party.

And thus, using the theory of disparate impact, Conservative economic theory is far less racist than liberal’s concept of dividing the populace into races, classes, and any other myriad of divisive sects. After all, the disparate impact of Liberalism has done far more to damage minority communities than the impact of conservative values, Republican policy, or tea-party agendas. If we, as a voting public, are to take the Liberal’s advice and judge policy on its consequential impact rather than its intention, President Barack Obama’s Democrat party would be rated as the most racist party since the conclusion of the Civil War.

Unemployment under President Barack Obama has just recently returned to the levels we saw during the recession. To put that another way, under the “best” years of President Barack Obama, we are just now seeing the same levels of unemployment we saw under the worst years of President Bush. And, more to the point, minority groups have largely been the most adversely impacted by the stagnant Democratic economy.

Blacks, under Bush, saw their unemployment rates drop in comparison to historic trends, when juxtaposed against white unemployment. And yet, after dropping well below the historic trend near the end of Bush’s second term, the unemployment rates of African Americans have again climbed to twice the rate of whites. If judged by the metrics we use to evaluate disparate impact in private business, President Obama is the worst President for Black America in recent memory.

By almost every measure, Democrat policies serve to disparately impact blacks and minorities more than whites. In large cities run by Democrats (New York, Chicago, LA, Detroit, DC) it is largely minorities that suffer chronic unemployment. Gun violence in Democrat jurisdictions adversely impact minorities – despite being regulated by Democrat gun control initiatives. Even when it comes to education, the American left fails to produce policies that disparately impact minorities in a positive fashion. It was the Democrats in Congress that sought to end school vouchers, and it is the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice that is actively suing to shut down a Louisiana school choice program aimed at inner-city youth.

Conservatives are for all individuals; regardless of class, race, or gender. Collectivists, by their very nature, are pre-disposed to break society into different sects. Liberals view the world as a collection of separate groups: the rich, the poor, the middle class, the homosexual, women, men, blacks, Latinos, Asians, etc. And, maybe it is this obsession with race and class, that make the liberal MSNBC panelists feel that their good intentions are more powerful than the impact of their policies.

On MSNBC this Sunday we saw a black Conservative berated, ignored, and ridiculed by a lady so obsessed with charging racism, that even his eye-witness testimony was not enough to give her pause. We had a Liberal blast the disparate impact of the Conservative movement, without a shred of evidence reinforcing her racially-oriented perception of the movement.

For many of the same reasons that Liberals first adopted the concept of disparate impact, they cling to their notions that all opposition to their initiatives are rooted in racism. Charges of racism are their lifeline in a losing argument. And this Sunday we saw their ignorance, as well as their racially obsessed prejudice toward Conservatives, on full display.

After all, Melissa Harris-Perry is living proof that anyone, even an African American with little ability to grasp political truths, can succeed in America. Clearly we live in a world where even the least effectual or intellectual among the black community can find success… After all, both she and Obama have jobs.

Michael Schaus is the Associate Editor for Townhall Finance, and the Executive Producer for Ransom Notes Radio. He is a former talk show host and political activist. Having worked in fields ranging from construction to financial investment, his perspectives and world views are forged with a deep understanding of what it means to be an American.